


Clarity

by bluenebulae



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Day 7: Rebirth, F/M, New York City, Reincarnation, Zutara Week, Zutara Week 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:13:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25658773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluenebulae/pseuds/bluenebulae
Summary: There’s something strangely familiar about Katara’s Tinder date.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 36
Kudos: 416
Collections: Zutara Week 2020





	Clarity

_“I know your soul. Everything else is just an ornament.”_

_― Roshani Chokshi, The Star-Touched Queen_

It’s been months since Katara’s been to this part of the city, and she’s beginning to remember why she hates it.

It’s rare she leaves Brooklyn these days, even rarer that she ventures above 14th Street, but this had been the place Zuko had suggested and Katara couldn’t think of anything better – certainly nothing fancier, at least. Columbus Circle is swamped with tourists milling about in the warm summer air, Central Park glimmering gently to the west, a reprieve from the fluorescent towers of billionaires’ row behind Katara. Her dress is sticking to her skin at the small of her back; Katara tugs at it distastefully, hoping her makeup hasn’t smudged in the heat.

She has to take several deep breaths before she enters the building. It’s not that she’s nervous, really; it’s just that it’s been so long since she’s been on any kind of date that she worries she’s forgotten what they’re like. Jet is a smudge in the rearview mirror of her life at this point, fading into the hazy pool of memories that makes up college, and she’d been so busy working to stay afloat since she graduated that things like this had just sort of slipped her mind. She’d all but forgotten about the dating app she’d downloaded in a wine-fueled burst of enthusiasm with Suki and Yue, the end credits of _Sleepless in Seattle_ splashed across her laptop screen – and then one day, apropos of nothing, a notification had flashed up on her phone: _You have matched with Zuko!_

Honestly, Katara had thought she’d deleted Tinder at that point, but apparently not, because something about the notification had sent her reeling for a moment. She’d leaned back in her desk chair, suddenly dizzy, and then when it finally faded she had opened the app for the first time in weeks and typed out _hey!_.

Still, she wouldn’t have guessed she would end up _here_.

Her heartbeat picks up as she presses the elevator call button, glancing around the crowd as she does so to see if she might recognize him. There’s a vague impression of him in her head from the pictures he’d used on his profile, but they’re all grainy and half-lit – artsy in a way that wouldn’t usually attract Katara, but there was just enough of him in them to intrigue her. It felt more genuine than the nameless sea of Bushwick boys with similar aspirations that she had left-swiped through, at least. And that name – it reminded her, somehow, of a memory she can’t name. A protagonist of a childhood book, maybe, or an old teacher, leaving a lingering imprint of warmth in her whenever she sees it. They’d never spoken on the phone either, just exchanged texts nearly daily, and so she’d never heard his voice. Sometimes, though, reading his messages, Katara could swear she could hear him speak them aloud, as if she already knows what he sounds like.

She doesn’t, though, and it means that pretty much any of the men milling about her now could be Zuko and she wouldn’t know it. The thought puts Katara on edge more than anything else. She swipes her fingers under her eyes, checking for mascara streaks for the thousandth time and cursing the impulse that had made her take a packed, sweaty subway train instead of an Uber.

The elevator takes her all the way to the top floor, where it opens with a pleasant _ding_ and releases Katara into a dim atrium, the Manhattan sunset sweeping over the whole place through a wall of windows. She’s blinded momentarily by the fire in the sky. It’s impossibly red, almost angrily so, and she remembers a snatch of poetry she’d adored in high school: _do not go gentle into that good night_.

 _Good night_. She can hope so, at least.

Before she enters the restaurant, she shoots her group chat a quick text: _going in_. A row of dots bubbles up next to Suki’s name immediately.

 _Suki_ : _You got this! It’s gonna be great. Have fun, but not too much fun ;)_

_Toph: use protection_

Katara rolls her eyes, but she smiles.

She hadn’t been worried about being underdressed, but as she enters the restaurant, she begins to double-guess herself. The place is cavernous, filled with dark leather chairs and glimmering chandeliers refracting the candlelight on the tables below them. Katara tugs at the hem of her dress, feeling the nerves return in waves.

“Can I help you?” the maître d' asks politely.

Katara shakes her head as she glances about, still somewhat in shock. “I’m supposed to be meeting someone…”

 _There_. At the back of the space, against the long window, sits a lone figure silhouetted by sunset. Katara starts toward him, the waves of worry becoming a full-blown hurricane. This was a bad idea – she’s remembering now why she’d stayed out of the dating scene for so long, and cursing the idea that she’d ever thought a _Tinder_ date would be the best way to get back into it after so long, because he could be _anyone_ –

Just before Katara reaches the man, he turns around. She blinks.

By the time she realizes she’s staring, Katara’s head is throbbing. There’s something behind her eyes, something sparking in the middle of her forehead, not quite painful – just annoying. The world has taken on an odd green tinge, like the afterglow from a firework. The man is hazy; his face fades in from the edges, a halo of dark hair framing a strong brow, scar tissue stretched across the expanse of one cheek.

The palm of her right hand tingles.

“Uh,” the man says, and stands. He looks slightly too pale as he steadies himself against his chair. “Hi. Are you feeling okay?”

Katara blinks enough times that the green tinge fades from her sight, and she can finally see him. He looks enough like his pictures that she can be sure that this is Zuko (even though there’s something more than that, a part of her thinks, something that makes her think she _knows_ him already) and he’s more attractive than she had expected and all of a sudden, Katara realizes she is standing there staring openmouthed at him.

“I’m so sorry, I just was – yes, I’m fine,” she says, and sticks out her hand. Zuko glances down at it, confused. “It’s nice to see you, Zuko. I mean, meet you.”

_A handshake? Really, Katara?_

His grip around hers’, though, is warm and comforting, and it grounds Katara. She gathers the courage to look up into his eyes again. At least this time, she doesn’t feel like she’s going to faint.

“Hi,” she says again.

“Hi,” Zuko says, and smiles a little. It’s lopsided and very charming. Katara feels a matching smile rise to her own lips involuntarily.

“This is a really nice place you picked.”

He shrugs. She notices the way his shoulders move beneath his white dress shirt, broad and strong. “I figured if you were going to come all the way up here, I should make it worth your while. Thank you for meeting me, by the way. I’m glad I finally get to see you.”

“It does kind of feel like we’ve been texting forever, doesn’t it?”

Katara slides into the seat across from Zuko. They’re right next to the window, and Central Park spreads lush beneath them, just beginning to come alight as twilight descends. It’s easier to look at his reflection in the glass, rather than right at Zuko – that makes her eyes sting, like staring at the sun. She watches his refracted figure move as he picks up his glass, filled with some sort of amber liquid, and drains it. For the first time, she considers that he might be just as nervous as her.

“I haven’t done this in a while,” she confesses. “Or ever, actually.”

“The going out to dinner part?”

She rolls her eyes. “The date-with-someone-I’ve-never-met-in-person part.”

“Ah.” Zuko nods. “Yeah, I’m not much of a dating app person either.”

“Who strong-armed you into setting up yours?”

“My ex-girlfriend.”

“Ex-girlfriend?” Katara repeats, surprised.

“She came out as a lesbian and started dating my sister. Long story.”

Katara can’t help it – she giggles. Zuko looks shocked, and she’s worried she’s offended him, but after a long moment, he smiles, too. “It’s weird, isn’t it?”

“It’s not the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard,” she answers. “But it’s up there.”

“Who made yours?”

She finds herself spilling out details, afraid of the silence if she stops – Suki, Sokka, Toph, Aang, her world at NYU and in Brooklyn and even back home in Seattle, how she misses the clouds and the ocean and her dad so much that it aches some days, but she wouldn’t trade New York for anything, not now that she’s here and she can feel the bustle of the city in her veins like a heartbeat every morning. Her nonprofit job in the little brownstone in the Village, how she can see the East River from her cubicle if she cranes her neck; the apartment she shares with Toph just outside the trendy part of the city, cramped and messy but warm. The life she’s built for herself, the one she’s grown to love. By the time she’s done speaking, there’s a bottle of wine sitting between them and the sun is nearly gone, sitting just above the skyline like a dying ember.

Zuko has been watching her the whole time, seeming genuinely interested, even when Katara was rambling about how much dirtier the streets here were than back home, and it’s only now that he leans back, appraising her with new eyes. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a West Coast girl.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“If you want it to be.”

She reaches out to refill his wineglass, and Zuko smiles. “Thank you, Katara.”

“I think I’m the one who should be thanking you.”

They both freeze. Katara’s head is light, her tongue too heavy in her mouth; she’d heard herself saying the words, but she hadn’t thought them. They’d just appeared, fully formed. As she spoke, they echoed in her head, oddly familiar.

“For dinner, I mean,” she says hurriedly, shaking away the déjà vu. “Thank you for buying dinner. And everything.”

“Yeah, of course. I know what you mean.” Zuko doesn’t look at all sure that he does, though.

She turns his questions back around on him as a waiter sets down a plate of some fancy-looking appetizer that Katara only vaguely remembers ordering. Zuko’s far more reticent with his past than she was with hers’, but she teases it out of him bit by bit: his childhood growing up in the city, his father’s business and his Ivy League sister, the faraway uncle who he’d lived with in Japan for three years, which gives Katara pause, a vague image of a kindly old man with his hands wrapped around a cup of tea forming in her mind.

“Japan. Wow.” The furthest Katara had been out of the country was Vancouver. She could barely imagine picking up her entire life and dropping it down an ocean away from everyone she knows. “Why’d you move back?”

“It’s a long story.” Zuko picks up his wine glass, avoiding eye contact.

“You’ve got a lot of long stories,” Katara says, not unkindly. “We’ve got all night, you know.”

At first, he looks as if he’s going to change the topic again, but then Zuko sighs and sets the glass down.

“My uncle and my father don’t really get along. My grandfather started a business, and my dad inherited it when he died; my uncle is older, but he didn’t want anything to do with it. They don’t see eye to eye on a lot of business practices. It’s complicated.” He seems like he wants to say more, but avoids it at the last second. “I agreed with my uncle about something, and my dad didn’t like it, so he shipped me off to Japan halfway through college.”

“What?” Katara blinks.

Zuko shrugs. “It was a good thing, in the long run. I was insufferable before.”

“I’m sure you weren’t that bad.”

“Oh, you have no idea.” He grins, but it’s gentle, surprisingly intimate. The light from the candle below plays across his jaw, creating strange patterns of shadow, and as Katara watches, she could swear his features begin to morph, softening slightly, baby fat filling out his cheeks and shaggy bangs sweeping across his forehead. She smells salty sea air, feels an invisible breeze at her back.

“Is it hot in here to you?” she says abruptly. “I feel really warm. It’s stuffy.”

Only after she’s said it does she realize how rude it is, but Zuko is nodding, and she’s so desperate to get some fresh air into her lungs that she can’t even bring herself to apologize. “Do you want to get out of here?”

“Yes,” she says fervently. “I would really, really like that.”

-

By the time Zuko settles their tab and the elevator deposits them back out onto the bustling street, dusk has fallen, and the city is beginning to light up. To the south, the lights of Midtown blink on one by one like artificial stars appearing from the twilight; the gentle glow of the streetlamps in Central Park is a welcoming beacon. Katara takes a deep breath. It’s full of car fumes and the late-summer tang of hot garbage, but it’s familiar in its unpleasantness, grounding her. For the first time, she can look Zuko in the face without feeling dizzy.

“I’m sorry about that,” she says. “I think I got a little overwhelmed. It was a nice place, it really was.”

“Don’t worry. Honestly, I’d rather be out here, too.” Zuko tips his chin up and closes his eyes, basking in the last rays of sunlight. “Places like that, they get old after a while. Central Park never does, though.”

She hadn’t expected him to want to continue her date after her minor freak out in the restaurant, but Zuko offers her his arm, suddenly formal. She can’t help but giggle at the old-fashioned motion.

“What?”

“I just wasn’t sure if you wanted to keep doing… _this_ ,” she says, waving a hand at both their bodies.

Zuko frowns. “Of course I do. I’m having a good time, Katara. Are you?”

“Yes,” she says, and finds that she really does mean it, despite all the strange dizziness and echoing voices in her head. She wants to keep being around him. She wants to know what his laugh sounds like, hear about the rest of his life. She wants to keep watching his smile spread slow across his face.

Central Park is emptier than Katara had expected, given how beautiful the night is, but she can’t complain. If she tunes out the rush of traffic at their backs, she can almost pretend they’ve stepped out of the city and into a real forest. She loops her arm through Zuko’s, studiously ignoring the way her nerve endings light up wherever they touch his bare skin.

“I should come here more often.”

“It’s my favorite place in the city,” Zuko agrees. “Whenever I need a moment to think, I come out here.” He stops on the path, considering, and then pulls Katara to the left. “Do you want to see my favorite part of it?”

“Of course,” Katara says, and lets Zuko take the lead.

The path he leads her to winds through the trees, so narrow that they can barely walk side-by-side without pressing into each other, and the earthy petrichor scent that had permeated Katara’s childhood fills her nose. She takes another deep breath, reveling in the smell that she so rarely finds in the middle of the city.

“When I was little, whenever it rained, my mom and I would always go out into our front yard and sit on the porch stoop and watch the storm, and it always smelled just like this.”

“Is she still back in Seattle?” Zuko asks.

Katara lets her gaze fall to their feet. “No. She died when I was five. I miss her every day, though.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Katara watches his gait falter slightly, pausing on the dirt track. Then she hears him say: “I’m sorry. That’s something we have in common.”

She closes her eyes, fighting back tears and the strange green glow encroaching at the corners of her vision.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Zuko says.

“No, it’s fine. I like talking about her. It makes it feel like she’s still here.” Once Katara is sure she can open her eyes without crying, she does so, and nearly loses her breath.

The narrow, tree-lined path has blossomed open before them, and they’re standing before a glassy lake, reflecting the moon and city lights above them in its pristine surface. A stone bridge arcs over it gracefully, empty but for a few lonesome strollers. It’s impossibly tranquil for the middle of Manhattan.

“Oh,” Katara says quietly.

She walks over to the bridge slowly, half in a trance, watching the moon’s reflection ripple in the slight breeze. She can feel Zuko behind her, just close enough to know he’s still there.

She thought, after so many years, she’d learned all the secrets the city had to offer, but it seems it’s been holding out on her.

When she reaches the middle of the bridge, she stops, holding her breath although she’s not sure why. It feels as if she might damage the gentle balance of the place by moving too fast. Beneath her in the water, her own face stares back at Katara, plaintive.

“It’s beautiful, Zuko,” she murmurs as he stops beside her.

Zuko leans his elbows on the railing, staring out past the pond and at the skyline beyond it. “I don’t know why, but it’s always felt familiar to me. I didn’t come here that much as a kid, but it _feels_ like I did, you know? Like there’s a part of me that has always known it.”

Katara understands. She’s felt that way too about the Pacific Ocean, the misty coastline and all the secrets shrouded within it. She’d never been able to say so in quite so many words, though.

“There are ducks,” Zuko continues. “They’ve got to be floating around here somewhere.”

Sure enough, a moment later, a small brown duck floats out from beneath the bridge, trailing a line of ducklings in its wake. Katara laughs, delighted. “We should’ve brought them some bread!”

“Wait.” Zuko’s eyes light up, and he dashes off the bridge, calling out over his shoulder “I’ll be back in a minute.”

In the sudden silence, Katara gathers her thoughts, watching the baby ducks circle the pond. Despite everything, she finds herself liking Zuko much more than she’d expected. Much more than she’d wanted to, honestly. It had been fun to text with him, to have the thrill of getting to know someone new, but now he’s so _real_ to her. Awkward, and charming, and intriguing. She’d been so sure this would be a one-off thing to get the idea of online dating out of her head, but he’s so much more than she had thought.

“Hey.”

Zuko’s by her side again, slightly out of breath, and clutched in both of his hands are the over-large soft pretzels that Katara sees at every street cart. She grins as he offers her one.

“Good thinking.”

“They looked hungry,” he responds as Katara rips a chunk out of her pretzel, and she laughs.

“They’re ducks,” she says doubtfully. “How can you tell what they’re feeling?”

“They’re very expressive ducks.”

Katara flings her piece of pretzel into the water and watches as the ducklings swarm it, pecking at the bread as if their lives depend on it. The smallest one, still downy with pale fuzz, hangs at the back, too shy to dive in with her brothers and sisters until Zuko throws her another little piece. Katara blinks.

The ducks have turtle shells on their backs.

Her mouth is dry. She turns to Zuko, about to ask him if he is seeing this, too, but he is gone. Beside her instead is a man swathed in rich red robes, his hands folded into his sleeves, a sharp golden crown secured in a pile of dark hair atop his head.

 _Maybe she should scream_ , is all that Katara can think through the daze. But then the man turns his head and it’s Zuko’s face there atop the starched collar, Zuko’s eyes wrinkled with concern.

“Katara?”

She shakes her head. When she looks up again, the strange image is gone, and Zuko is staring at her as if she’s grown another head.

“Sorry,” Katara mumbles again, feeling helpless.

“It’s okay.” His knuckles are white on the railing, Katara notices. He’s clutching it as if his life depends on it. “Must be the heat or something.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. And then, because she feels horrible for making him worry, “Please don’t think I’m not having a good time with you. I’m having an amazing time. It’s just—” She breaks off, unsure how to phrase it without seeming crazy. “The heat, I guess. You’re right.”

“Must be,” Zuko murmurs, although he doesn’t sound at all convinced.

They finish their pretzels, though, splitting them between themselves and the ducks, chatting idly as the last rays of sun fall over the horizon. When Katara begins to shiver, Zuko frowns, grasping at his shoulder as if he means to give her a jacket he doesn’t have.

“It’s getting late, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Katara responds, feeling suddenly coy.

“And it’s a long train ride back to Brooklyn.”

“Not as long as you’d think.” Katara pauses, considering if she’s really going to do this. She could try to blame it on the wine from earlier, but truthfully, that liquid courage faded from her veins long ago; the truth is simply that she doesn’t want to leave Zuko. She likes feeling his warmth beside her, the raspy timbre of his voice, his surprisingly snarky quips and the way he focuses intently on Katara whenever she talks. She doesn’t want to give that up quite yet.

“I think I’ve got a little longer before I have to head back.”

“What else would you want to do?” asks Zuko.

“Anything.” Katara shrugs. “I just don’t want the night to end quite yet.”

“You’re in luck, then. I’ve heard this city never sleeps.”

“We should definitely test that theory.”

It’s only after the words have left Katara’s mouth that she realizes the multiple meanings they could have. A blush rises high in her cheeks, and she can only hope it’s dark enough that Zuko can’t see it.

He takes her hand as he leads her back out through the tree-lined thicket, the glow of the city lights barely permeating the dense leaves. Katara shivers again, even though she’s barely even cold. There’s a thrumming sensation throughout her body, radiating from the place where her hands are linked, shooting up her arm and deep into her stomach and into all her limbs, setting her on fire from the inside, and against that blaze the evening chill is too much. It’s been years since she felt desire like this ( _never,_ her mind whispers, _you’ve never felt anything quite like him_ ) and yet after so long, Katara doesn’t know how to broach the topic. Around him, she feels her tongue turn to jelly in her mouth, her well-constructed sentences melting right out of her ears, and she can only blame it on the night’s weird hallucinations a little bit.

It doesn’t stop her from tugging on his hand before Zuko can lead her to the park exit, turning him around under a streetlamp. He blinks at her, bemused.

“What’s up?”

The words stick in her throat, but Katara raises her chin slightly, wondering if he’ll take the hint.

He does.

His lips are just as warm as the rest of him – warmer, actually, Katara thinks, and just gentle enough, and she feels herself melt into his hands, the only thing tethering her to earth his hand at the small of her back. A quiet rushing fills her head. She’d almost worried that after so long, she would have forgotten how to kiss, but it feels natural to move with Zuko, to tangle her hands in the hair at the nape of his neck and let him tip her back, her stomach lurching as she laughs into his mouth.

When Zuko pulls back, his eyes are glazed and color is blazing high in his cheeks. His hair is mussed from Katara’s hands. She can’t imagine she looks much better.

It hits her, then, that they’re standing in the middle of Central Park, making out where anyone can see them like a pair of horny teenagers. She can’t quite summon the embarrassment she thinks she should feel about it. She can, however, find just enough bravery to ask her next question.

“Will you take me home?”

Zuko begins to agree, but then stops, realizing what she means.

“Home to…”

Katara nods.

“Are you sure?”

 _More sure than I've been about anything in my entire life_ , she thinks. But all she says is “yes.”

-

Zuko hadn’t been lying when he said his apartment was close by. They barely walk ten blocks from the park’s boundary, hands locked together and excitement thrumming in Katara’s veins, when Zuko stops at a tall set of glass doors and punches a code into the lockbox. Beyond the doors, the lobby sprawls cavernous before them, all slick marble floors and plush velvet couches. Katara wonders if Zuko can see her jaw drop.

He just brushes by it all without a second thought and heads for the bank of elevators against the back wall. Katara almost wants to linger, drinking in the glamor of the place – she’s _sure_ she’s never been in such an expensive building before – but her desire to see what Zuko’s home is like wins out. She follows him to the elevator.

“This is really nice,” she mumbles as they shoot up the floors.

Zuko shrugs. “It’s fine. I wasn’t sure where to go when I moved back, so I kind of just picked the first place that had an opening.”

“Wait until you see my place,” Katara mutters darkly.

“Oh, it’s _when,_ not _if_?”

He’s smirking, even as she slaps at his shoulder playfully.

Katara slides her hand back into his just before the elevator doors open. As Zuko leads her down the hallway, the tangle of nerves in the pit of her stomach tightens. It’s not that she’s nervous about _him_ – she wants to do this, she’s absolutely sure of it – but it’s just such a foreign situation to her, everything about it: the building, the lifestyle, the very idea of going home with a man who she had just met.

“Hey.”

Katara looks up. Zuko has stopped in front of one of the doors and is looking down at her with concern.

“We don’t have to do this if you’re not sure about it,” he says softly. “I can call you a cab right now if you want. We can take it slow.”

She turns it over in her mind, but the notion of leaving Zuko now is like a physical ache to her. She shakes her head. Zuko turns his key in the lock.

The first thing she sees are the windows, sweeping along one entire wall of the apartment so that the vast vista of the glowing Manhattan skyline is laid out before them, a mountain range of skyscrapers lit up neon and white. Katara rushes over to it, only vaguely taking in the rest of the sparsely-decorated room: the black leather couch, the huge TV, the utter lack of any personal ornamentation on the walls. She all but presses her nose to the glass.

“It always looks better from above, doesn’t it?”

She nods without tearing her eyes away. “I used to dream about this sight all the time, back when I was still a teenager. All I wanted was to be here.”

“And now?”

Zuko joins her at the window. He’s got a glass of water in each hand; Katara takes one gratefully, not realizing how thirsty she was until she sees it. “Is it everything you thought it would be?”

“More,” she says honestly.

This time, she kisses him, pressing herself up on her tiptoes so she can get one arm around Zuko’s neck. Zuko grabs the water glasses, fumbling to set them down before his arms slowly encircle her, pressing her into his chest. She feels her breath come shorter, her pulse beginning to pound insistently at her throat, and though she’s beginning to ache from the stretch of leaning up to kiss him she deepens it still until Zuko gets his hands beneath her legs and hoists her up, pressing her against the glass. Against the heat of him, it’s a cold, clarifying counterpoint, and it just heightens everything; Katara tightens her arms around Zuko’s neck, clinging to him with all the strength she has.

When he pulls back, he’s wild-eyed. “Are you….”

Katara trails one finger down his cheek, just below the scar that surrounds his eye, and over his lips. She kisses him once more, gently, then nods.

He doesn’t bother to turn the lights on in his bedroom. His hands are too full of her. Not that it matters to Katara; even if she could see the room, she wouldn’t want to look away from Zuko, not even for a moment. Her entire body is coiled around him, and she feels as if she’s burning up from the inside out, every part of her just wanting him closer, closer still, wanting to open up and take him inside of her entirely.

There’s a _thump_ as Zuko’s knees hit the edge of his bed, and Katara sprawls backwards, too enthralled to even laugh. Zuko’s eyes are hooded as he leans over her. Katara bites her lip as his hands slide up her thighs, to the hem of her dress, and rucks it up nearly to her hips.

She leans up and presses a kiss to the base of his throat. When she pulls away, the shadow of something _else_ is overlaid on Zuko’s face, that ghostly golden crown hovering above his head. The room behind him is bathed in firelight, the walls a rich, deep red.

It’s unsettling. It is. And yet it’s familiar, too, and no matter how many times Katara blinks it won’t go away.

“Katara?” Zuko murmurs.

“I’m fine,” she responds, and shuts him up with another kiss, because she _is_ and she’s not going to let something like this ruin it. Even though there are strange words now filling up her head – _Fire Lord Zuko_ , she thinks, and then, even more unusual, _lightning_.

His skin grows hotter beneath her touch. Katara rings his throat with kisses, laboriously undoing the buttons of his shirt, feeling thick layers of cotton on her fingertips. She eyes each new inch of skin hungrily until she rips it off him entirely. His chest is pale and perfect in the flickering firelight, and a strange, lurching feeling fills her up, as if the world has just tilted sideways. 

“Where’s your scar?”

They both freeze.

Katara touches her lips, confused. The words had risen out of nowhere, rolling off her tongue before she could even think them, and they make no sense –

Except they do. She can _see_ the echo of the scar spreading across his chest, red and raw and star-shaped, and it sends so many different emotions roiling through her that she thinks she might faint. Guilt, awe, gratitude. Unabashed, unconditional love, as strong as anything Katara’s ever felt, filling her up.

“I—” Her throat is dry, and she coughs. “I’m sorry, Zuko. I don’t know where that came from.”

“No.”

He pulls back. Katara’s fucked it up. She’s fucked it up and she doesn’t even know _why_ this time, there’s nothing she can do—

“You feel it, too,” Zuko whispers hoarsely.

“What?”

“I—the first time I saw you, in that restaurant, it was like I knew it was you right away. Not just because I recognized you from your pictures. I _knew_ you, Katara. I knew how your voice would sound before you said anything.” His voice lowers. “I knew what you would fucking _taste_ like.”

Katara takes his face in both her hands so Zuko can’t look away. She feels herself falling forward, into those pools of molten gold, and then—

_She sees it all. The cave, illuminated by sharp green crystals, his scar beneath her searching fingertips. The sting of the cold at the North Pole, his fire sizzling against her ice. Wind in her hair atop the back of a great shaggy creature, the ocean vast below them, Zuko’s voice a constant. A courtyard ringed in fire. A crack of blue. A shout._

_A sunrise reflected in a pond. A hand in hers. Giggling children robed in red and blue. Those eyes, always those eyes_.

Katara jerks back.

The only sound in the dark room is their heavy breathing. Her heart is beating wildly away, even if her mind is somewhere a world away, lost amidst flames and waves. Zuko’s eyes are blown wide, glowing through the darkness.

“Did you see that?” she whispers.

Zuko nods. One of his hands inches across the bed to cover Katara’s, as if tethering her to this place, this version of themselves.

“Was it…real?”

“I don’t know,” he rasps. And then, “I think so. It felt real.”

It did to her, too. If she concentrates, Katara can taste bitter tea leaves on her tongue. She can feel water slipping between her fingers, circling the ragged hole in Zuko’s tunic through which the wound shines through.

Slowly, holding her breath, she moves her free hand up to place it against Zuko’s chest, right above his sternum, where she had seen the scar.

Zuko starts. A visible shiver rolls through him, and he hangs his head. “I still don’t understand it.”

“You nearly died for me,” she says. “You loved me so much you would have died for me.”

Abruptly, she wants to laugh. It’s a ridiculous thing to say to a man she had only spent a single night with, and it overwhelms her all of a sudden, the absurdity of the entire situation. She tries her hardest to tamp it down, but she can’t help the quirk of her lips, the snort that escapes.

Zuko looks up at her, and they both lose it.

He slumps over into her lap, both of them vibrating with laughter, so much of it that Katara loses her breath. “This is crazy,” she gasps out in between fresh fits of giggles, and all Zuko can do is nod, his chin sharp against her thigh.

When the laughter has finally subsided, he looks up at her, and the wave of emotions hit Katara all over again. She’s ready for them this time, though, and so instead of overwhelming her, she lets them wash through her, all that love and gratitude and pride her other self had felt for the man before her. She feels it all, and then she smiles at him gently, and feels her heart swell with an entirely new emotion when he smiles back.

“What do we do now?” she asks.

Zuko trails his fingers across her thigh absentmindedly. “We live with it, I guess.”

 _Live with it_. They can learn what this means, what they had felt for each other once in another lifetime, but Katara doesn’t forget that before any of it, she had been drawn to his words on a glowing screen, his silhouette in a grainy image. They were Zuko and Katara once, but they’re also Zuko and Katara now, and she still wants to know what that is.

“I think I can do that,” she murmurs, and leans down to kiss him.

The memories may never fade entirely, she thinks as she pulls Zuko back onto the bed, and they will learn to live with it. But there will be more, too. Their own memories. The ones they’re making right now, flames and ice intertwining with city lights. And if they had to be reborn into a life like this, she can only be glad that they could find each other again.

**Author's Note:**

> this is definitely the most self-indulgent thing i’ve ever written lol, i’m sorry yall 😩 this is how my longing for pre-pandemic nyc is manifesting apparently hahah
> 
> now that we're at the end of zutara week, i just want to say a massive thank you to all of you for the love you've showered on my other works, and the love YOU'VE put into this fandom!!! i have seen so much beautiful fanfic and fanart and just amazing amounts of talent this week and it's so inspiring to me 💕💕 i'm super excited to keep writing for zuko and katara (after like a week off to rest my wrists lmao) and this has been the exact energy i need in my life with everything going on. thank you so much for the reviews and kudoses and i hope you're all doing well, wherever you are ❤


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